"Rancho Boca de Santa Monica"
by Pablo Capra
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| Bonifacio Marquez and son Miguel, c/o Ernest Marquez Collection |
In 1827, about 25 years after the last Native Americans departed Topanga Beach, the land was given to Antonio Ignacio Machado and Francisco Javier Alvarado by Mexico as part of a 6,656-acre grant called the Rancho Boca de Santa Monica.
The next owners, Ysidro Reyes (1813-1861) and Francisco Marquez (1798-1850), were the first settlers to actually live on the Rancho, building permanent structures at the eponymous “mouth” of Santa Monica Canyon in 1838. They maintained their claim after California changed hands in the Mexican-American War in 1848.
When the land was divided among their children, Marquez’s son Bonifacio (1838-1891) was given Topanga Beach. Much of the rest of the Rancho was sold off in the early 1870s to Colonel Robert S. Baker (1826-1894) and Nevada Senator John P. Jones (1829-1912), co-founders of the city of Santa Monica.
Those were the days before the cities of the Southwest learned that co-operation and not competition is the surest way to the success of all, and certain groups in several of the inland communities with an eye to holding the tourist trade were lavish with disparaging tales of the winter climate of Santa Monica….
[Henry J. Engelbrecht, Superintendent of the North Beach Bath House, and Juan José Carrillo (1842-1916), Santa Monica’s first mayor,] arranged to hold old Spanish sports on the beach during the worst winter months to attract people to the city….
[T]he contest which aroused the greatest interest was that called corrida del gallo [“Pull the Rooster”]. A live chicken was buried in the sand, leaving exposed only his head and neck, which was well greased to render it more difficult to grasp. The horsemen would spur past at top speed, and holding fast to the horn with the left hand, swept gracefully down from the saddle in an attempt to seize the fowl and drag him out as they sped by. Not only must the rider gauge his distance perfectly, but often as not the horse would shy at the strange wriggling object in his path, and he would come down very properly into the dust. The late Mike Marquez, a member of the well-known Marquez family of this city and regarded as one of the finest riders in the Southwest, suffered a fractured leg in such a fall on the ocean front….
[By 1898,] the sport had long since been forbidden by the humane authorities, and its devotees were obliged to indulge only infrequently and out of sight and hearing of the law up the beach toward Topanga. Its last appearance in the community was… [at] a grand fiesta held by… Bonifacio… on the shore of the cove known as Las Jollitas at the mouth of [Las] Pulgas canyon….
—“Santa Monica Beach Sports Once Attracted Cream of Southland’s Colorful Horsemen to Compete in Most Dangerous of Tournaments,” Sunday Morning Outlook, 1927-11-06
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| Cattle brands used on the Rancho Boca de Santa Monica, c/o Ernest Marquez Collection |
Bullfighting was also part of the rodeo games on the Rancho. “No Spanish community is without a bull-ring or its equivalent.” There was even one in Santa Monica, “in the gulch south of Colorado street,” that was later made into a bicycle race track. Today it’s the 10 Freeway.
In 1899, Bonifacio’s widow, Maria Antonia Olivares de Marquez, sold Lower Topanga to Edward C. Stelle (1856-1951), who in 1906 seems to have lost the property because of delinquent taxes.
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This is an excerpt from the book Topanga Beach: A History, 1820s-1920s. Author Pablo Capra is a former Lower Topanga resident, and continues to preserve the history of that neighborhood on his website, www.brasstackspress.com, and as a board member of the Topanga Historical Society, www.topangahistoricalsociety.org.
